This invention relates in general to telephone systems, and more particularly to a telephone system with programmable line appearances.
Telephones with multiple line appearances are well known. When such telephones are shared by several users in a work environment, each line appearance may be associated with an individual user. Thus, for example, a single telephone set may be used at a nurse""s station of a hospital, whereby individual line appearances are used by different nurses.
Unfortunately, such prior art systems do not provide personalized services, such as voice mail, etc., for the individual users. Normally, only the prime number (i.e. line appearance) is provided with enhanced call features such as voice mail, message notification, speed dial, etc. Also, only a limited number of line appearances are available o an individual telephone, which may not coincide with the number users requiring use of the telephone during different time periods. For example, where the users (e.g. nurses) work different shifts, it would be highly desirable to assign a particular line appearance for the purpose of providing personalized services, to several users who work different shifts.
According to the present invention, multiple users are able to log in to a plurality of line appearances on a multi-line telephone set in order to access personalized services associated with individual user profiles for the users. Preferably, the telephone is provided with individual displays and message notification lights for the individual line appearances. Users identify themselves by logging in to a particular line appearance via telephone key input of user name and password, or other suitable log in function. Thus, the system of the present invention is particularly useful in work environment where transients workers require access to personalized telephony services through a single telephone set. Examples of such work environments include hospital nurse stations, laboratories, etc.